{"id":"01KF7FPTG77JT89QHEWDYEF9BF","cid":"bafkreibhlly5jsw223pjpamimfgpqjlu4v3h4zgllbwevfvylke45dl2la","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":20987,"extracted_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:21.461Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KESYVB66H8YEVTN88DWE9W8D","start_line":20925,"text":"stand by to stern.\r\n\r\nNow, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis,\r\nits bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale’s head while yet\r\nunder water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that\r\nmalicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted\r\nhimself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head\r\nlengthwise beneath the boat.\r\n\r\nThrough and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for\r\nan instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a\r\nbiting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his\r\nmouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into\r\nthe open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish\r\npearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Ahab’s\r\nhead, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale\r\nnow shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With\r\nunastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the\r\ntiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other’s heads to gain the\r\nuttermost stern.\r\n\r\nAnd now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the\r\nwhale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his\r\nbody being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from\r\nthe bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while\r\nthe other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis\r\nimpossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Ahab, furious with\r\nthis tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and\r\nhelpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized\r\nthe long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from\r\nits gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the\r\nfrail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an\r\nenormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in\r\ntwain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the\r\ntwo floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the\r\ncrew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold\r\nfast to the oars to lash them across.\r\n\r\nAt that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Ahab, the first\r\nto perceive the whale’s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a\r\nmovement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had\r\nmade one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only\r\nslipping further into the whale’s mouth, and tilting over sideways as\r\nit slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him\r\nout of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the\r\nsea.\r\n\r\nRipplingly withdrawing from his prey, Moby Dick now lay at a little\r\ndistance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the\r\nbillows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;\r\nso that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose—some twenty or more feet\r\nout of the water—the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,\r\ndazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray\r\nstill higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel\r\nbillows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to\r\noverleap its summit with their scud.\r\n\r\n*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its\r\ndesignation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary\r\nup-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called\r\npitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best\r\nand most comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KF7FPP1KY7X3H2X34N66JHE1","peer_label":"Chapter 133","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KF7FPP1KY7X3H2X34N66JHE1","peer_label":"Chapter 133","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KF7FPKDT5SHSH1ZQV6ABHQCA","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"book","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KESYJX0Z6XE0HWTS5N3SDG0B","peer_label":"The Classics","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTFATP41P3PTGX6WS56A","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KF7FPTEW325TTQQ6K4JVEVMT","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-18T02:42:22.011Z","ts":"2026-01-18T02:42:28.883Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KF7FCDA7SCSJ6A30TDPDSJQV"}}